Good morning President
Taylor, Board of Trustees, faculty, parents, family, friends, the
community of Galesburg, the class of 1955 -- which I understand was
out partying last night, and yet still showed up here on time -- and
most of all, the Class of 2005. Congratulations on your graduation,
and thank you -- thank you for the honor of allowing me to be a part of it. Thank
you also, Mr. President, for this honorary degree. It was only a
couple of years ago that I stopped paying my student loans in law
school. Had I known it was this easy, I would have ran [sic] for the
United States Senate earlier.

You know, it has been
about six months now since you sent me to Washington as your United
States Senator. I recognize that not all of you voted for me, so for
those of you muttering under your breath "I didnít send you
anywhere," that's ok too. Maybe weíll hold -- What do you call it? --
a little Pumphandle after the ceremony. Change your mind for the next
time.

It has been a
fascinating journey thus far. Each time I walk onto the Senate
floor, I'm reminded of the history, for good and for ill, that has
been made there. But there have been a few surreal moments. For
example, I remember the day before I was sworn in, myself and my
staff, we decided to hold a press conference in our office. Now,
keep in mind that I am ranked 99th in seniority. I was proud that I
wasnít ranked dead last until I found out that itís just because
Illinois is bigger than Colorado. So Iím 99th in seniority, and all
the reporters are crammed into the tiny transition office that I
have, which is right next to the janitorís closet in the basement of
the Dirksen Office Building. Itís my first day in the building, I
have not taken a single vote, I have not introduced one bill, had
not even sat down in my desk, and this very earnest reporter raises
his hand and says:

ďSenator Obama, what is
your place in history?Ē

I did what you just did,
which is laugh out loud. I said, "place in history?" I thought he was
kidding. At that point, I wasnít even sure the other Senators would
save a place for me at the cool kidsí table.

But as I was thinking
about the words to share with this class, about whatís next, about
whatís possible, and what opportunities lay ahead, I actually think
itís not a bad question for you, the class of 2005, to ask
yourselves: What will be your place
in history?

In other eras, across
distant lands, this question could be answered with relative ease
and certainty. As a servant in Rome, you knew youíd spend your life
forced to build somebody elseís Empire. As a peasant in 11th Century
China, you knew that no matter how hard you worked, the local
warlord might come and take everything you had -- and you also knew
that famine might come knocking at the door. As a subject of King
George, you knew that your freedom of worship and your freedom to
speak and to build your own life would be ultimately limited by the
throne.

And then America
happened.

A place where destiny
was not a destination, but a journey to be shared and shaped and
remade by people who had the gall, the temerity to believe that,
against all odds, they could form ďa more perfect unionĒ on this new
frontier.

And as people around the
world began to hear the tale of the lowly colonists who overthrew an
empire for the sake of an idea, they started to come. Across oceans
and the ages, they settled in Boston and Charleston, Chicago and St.
Louis, Kalamazoo and Galesburg, to try and build their own American
Dream. This collective dream moved forward imperfectly -- it was
scarred by our treatment of native peoples, betrayed by slavery,
clouded by the subjugation of women, shaken by war and depression.
And yet, brick by brick, rail by rail, calloused hand by calloused
hand, people kept dreaming, and building, and working, and marching,
and petitioning their government, until they made America a land
where the question of our place in history is not answered for us.
Itís answered by us.

Have we failed at times?
Absolutely. Will you occasionally fail when you embark on your own
American journey? You surely will. But the test is not perfection.
The true test of the American ideal is whether weíre able to
recognize our failings and then rise together to meet the challenges
of our time. Whether we allow ourselves to be shaped by events and
history, or whether we act to shape them. Whether chance of birth or
circumstance decides lifeís big winners and losers, or whether we
build a community where, at the very least, everyone has a chance to
work hard, get ahead, and reach their dreams.

We have faced this
choice before.

At the end of the Civil
War, when farmers and their families began moving into the cities to
work in the big factories that were sprouting up all across America,
we had to decide: Do we do nothing and allow captains of industry
and robber barons to run roughshod over the economy and workers by
competing to see who can pay the lowest wages at the worst working
conditions? Or do we try to make the system work by setting up basic
rules for the market, instituting the first public schools, busting
up monopolies, letting workers organize into unions?

We chose to act, and we
rose together.

When the irrational
exuberance of the Roaring Twenties came crashing down with the stock
market, we had to decide: do we follow the call of leaders who would
do nothing, or the call of a leader who, perhaps because of his
physical paralysis, refused to accept political paralysis?

We chose to
act -- regulating the market, putting people back to work, expanding
bargaining rights to include health care and a secure retirement -- and
together we rose.

When World War II
required the most massive home front mobilization in history and we
needed every single American to lend a hand, we had to decide: Do we
listen to skeptics who told us it wasnít possible to produce that
many tanks and planes? Or, did we build Rooseveltís Arsenal for
Democracy and grow our economy even further by providing our
returning heroes with a chance to go to college and own their own
home?

Again, we chose to act,
and again, we rose together.

Today, at the beginning
of this young century, we have to decide again. But this time, it is
your turn to choose.

Here in Galesburg, you
know what this new challenge is. Youíve seen it.
All of you, your first year in college saw what happened at 9/11.
Itís already been noted, the degree to which your lives will be
intertwined with the war on terrorism that currently is taking
place. But what youíve also seen, perhaps not as spectacularly, is
the fact that when you drive by the old Maytag plant around
lunchtime, no one walks out anymore. I saw it during the campaign
when I met union guys who worked at the plant for 20, 30 years and
now wonder what theyíre gonna do at the age of 55 without a pension
or health care; when I met the man whoís son needed a new liver but
because heíd been laid off, didnít know if he could afford to
provide his child the care that he needed.

Itís as if someone
changed the rules in the middle of the game and no wonder -- no one bothered to
tell these folks. And, in reality, the rules have changed.

It started with
technology and automation that rendered entire occupations obsolete.
When was the last time anybody here stood in line for the bank
teller instead of going to the ATM, or talked to a switchboard
operator? Then it continued when companies like Maytag were able to
pick up and move their factories to some under developed country
where workers were a lot cheaper than they are in the United States.

As Tom Friedman points
out in his new book, The World Is Flat, over the last decade or so,
these forces -- technology and globalization -- have combined like
never before. So that while most of us have been paying attention to
how much easier technology has made our own lives -- sending e-mails
back and forth on our blackberries, surfing the Web on our cell
phones, instant messaging with friends across the world -- a quiet
revolution has been breaking down barriers and connecting the
worldís economies. Now business not only has the ability to move
jobs wherever thereís a factory, but wherever thereís an internet
connection.

Countries like India and
China realized this. They understand that they no longer need to be
just a source of cheap labor or cheap exports. They can compete with
us on a global scale. The one resource they needed were skilled,
educated workers. So they started schooling their kids earlier,
longer, with a greater emphasis on math and science and technology,
until their most talented students realized they donít have to come
to America to have a decent life -- they can stay right where they
are.

The result? China is
graduating four times the number of engineers that the United States
is graduating. Not only are those Maytag employees competing with
Chinese and Indian and Indonesian and Mexican workers, you are too.
Today, accounting firms are e-mailing your tax returns to workers in
India who will figure them out and send them back to you as fast as
any worker in Illinois or Indiana could.

When you lose your
luggage in Boston at an airport, tracking it down may involve a call
to an agent in Bangalore, who will find it by making a phone call to
Baltimore. Even the Associated Press has outsourced some of their
jobs to writers all over the world who can send in a story at a
click of a mouse.

As Prime Minister Tony
Blair has said, in this new economy, "Talent is the 21st century
wealth." If you've got the skills, you've got the education, and
you have the opportunity to upgrade and improve both, youíll be able
to compete and win anywhere. If not, the fall will be further and
harder than it ever was before.

So what do we do about this? How does America find its way in this
new, global economy? What will our place in history be?

Like so much of the
American story, once again, we face a choice. Once again, there are
those who believe that there isnít much we can do about this as a
nation. That the best idea is to give everyone one big refund on
their government -- divvy it up by individual portions, in the form
of tax breaks, hand it out, and encourage everyone to use their
share to go buy their own health care, their own retirement plan,
their own child care, their own education, and so on.

In Washington, they call
this the Ownership Society. But in our past there has been another
term for it -- Social Darwinism -- every man or woman for him or
herself. Itís a tempting idea, because it doesnít require much
thought or ingenuity. It allows us to say that those whose health
care or tuition may rise faster than they can afford -- tough luck.
It allows us to say to the Maytag workers who have lost their job --
life isnít fair. It letís us say to the child who was born into
poverty -- pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And it is especially
tempting because each of us believes we will always be the winner in
lifeís lottery, that weíre the one who will be the next Donald
Trump, or at least we wonít be the chump who Donald Trump says:
ďYouíre fired!Ē

But there is a problem.
It wonít work. It ignores our history. It ignores the fact that itís
been government research and investment that made the railways
possible and the internet possible. Itís been the creation of a
massive middle class, through decent wages and benefits and public
schools that allowed us all to prosper. Our economic dependence
depended on individual initiative. It depended on a belief in the
free market; but it has also depended on our sense of mutual regard
for each other, the idea that everybody has a stake in the country,
that weíre all in it together and everybodyís got a shot at
opportunity. Thatís whatís produced our unrivaled political
stability.

And so if we do nothing
in the face of globalization, more people will continue to lose
their health care. Fewer kids will be able to afford the diploma
youíre about to receive.

More companies like
United Airlines wonít be able to provide pensions for their
employees. And those Maytag workers will be joined in the
unemployment line by any worker whose skills can be bought and sold
on the global market.

So today Iím here to
tell you what most of you already know. This is not us -- the option
that I just mentioned. Doing nothing. Itís not how our story ends --
not in this country. America is a land of big dreamers and big
hopes.

It is this hope that has
sustained us through revolution and civil war, depression and world
war, a struggle for civil and social rights and the brink of nuclear
crisis. And it is because our dreamers dreamed that we have emerged
from each challenge more united, more prosperous, and more admired
than before.

So letís dream. Instead
of doing nothing or simply defending 20th century solutions, letís
imagine together what we could do to give every American a fighting
chance in the 21st century.

What if we prepared
every child in America with the education and skills they need to
compete in the new economy? If we made sure that college was
affordable for everyone who wanted to go? If we walked up to those
Maytag workers and we said ďYour old job is not coming back, but a
new job will be there because weíre going to seriously retrain you
and thereís life-long education thatís waiting for you -- the sorts
of opportunities that Knox has created with the Strong Futures
scholarship program.

What if no matter where
you worked or how many times you switched jobs, you had health care
and a pension that stayed with you always, so you all had the
flexibility to move to a better job or start a new business? What if
instead of cutting budgets for research and development and science,
we fueled the genius and the innovation that will lead to the new
jobs and new industries of the future?

Right now, all across
America, there are amazing discoveries being made. If we supported
these discoveries on a national level, if we committed ourselves to
investing in these possibilities, just imagine what it could do for
a town like Galesburg. Ten or twenty years down the road, that old
Maytag plant could re-open its doors as an Ethanol refinery that
turned corn into fuel. Down the street, a biotechnology research lab
could open up on the cusp of discovering a cure for cancer. And
across the way, a new auto company could be busy churning out
electric cars. The new jobs created would be filled by American
workers trained with new skills and a world-class education.

All of that is possible
but none of it will come easy. Every one of us is going to have to
work more, read more, train more, think more. We will have to slough
off some bad habits -- like driving gas guzzlers that weaken our
economy and feed our enemies abroad. Our children will have to turn
off the TV set once in a while and put away the video games and
start hitting the books. Weíll have to reform institutions, like our
public schools, that were designed for an earlier time. Republicans
will have to recognize our collective responsibilities, even as
Democrats recognize that we have to do more than just defend old
programs.

It wonít be easy, but it
can be done. It can be our future. We have the talent and the
resources and brainpower. But now we need the political will. We
need a national commitment.

And we need each of you.

Now, no one can force
you to meet these challenges. If you want, it will be pretty easy
for you to leave here today and not give another thought to towns
like Galesburg and the challenges they face. There is no community
service requirement in the real world; no one is forcing you to
care. You can take your diploma, walk off this stage, and go chasing
after the big house, and the nice suits, and all the other things
that our money culture says that you should want, that you should
aspire to, that you can buy.

But I hope you donít
walk away from the challenge. Focusing your life solely on making a
buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of
yourself. You need to take up the challenges that we face as a
nation and make them your own. Not because you have a debt to those
who helped you get here, although you do have that debt. Not because
you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate than you,
although I do think you do have that obligation. Itís primarily
because you have an obligation to yourself. Because individual
salvation has always depended on collective salvation. Because itís
only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself
that you realize your true potential.

And I know that all of
you are wondering how youíll do this, the challenges seem so big.
They seem so difficult for one person to make a difference.

But we know it can be
done. Because where youíre sitting, in this very place, in this
town, itís happened before.

Nearly two centuries
ago, before civil rights, before voting rights, before Abraham
Lincoln, before the Civil War, before all of that, America was
stained by the sin of slavery. In the sweltering heat of southern
plantations, men and women who looked like me could not escape the
life of pain and servitude in which they were sold. And yet, year
after year, as this moral cancer ate away at the American ideals of
liberty and equality, the nation was silent.

But its people didnít
stay silent for long.

One by one,
abolitionists emerged to tell their fellow Americans that this would
not be our place in history -- that this was not the America that had
captured the imagination of the world.

This resistance that
they met was fierce, and some paid with their lives. But they would
not be deterred, and they soon spread out across the country to
fight for their cause. One man from New York went west, all the way
to the prairies of Illinois to start a colony.

And here in Galesburg,
freedom found a home.

Here in Galesburg, the
main depot for the Underground Railroad in Illinois, escaped slaves
could roam freely on the streets and take shelter in peopleís homes.
And when their masters or the police would come for them, the people
of this town would help them escape north, some literally carrying
them in their arms to freedom.

Think about the risks
that involved. If they were caught abetting a fugitive, you couldíve
been jailed or lynched. It would have been simple for these
townspeople to turn the other way; to go live their lives in a
private peace.

And yet, they didnít do
that. Why?

Because they knew that
we were all Americans; that we were all brothers and sisters; the
same reason that a century later, young men and women your age would
take Freedom Rides down south, to work for the Civil Rights
movement. The same reason that black women would walk instead of
ride a bus after a long day of doing somebody elseís laundry and
cleaning somebody elseís kitchen. Because they were marching for
freedom.

Today, on this day of
possibility, we stand in the shadow of a lanky, raw-boned man with
little formal education who once took the stage at Old Main and told
the nation that if anyone did not believe the American principles of
freedom and equality, that those principles were timeless and
all-inclusive, they should go rip that page out of the Declaration
of Independence.

My hope for all of you
is that as you leave here today, you decide to keep these principles
alive in your own life and in the life of this country. You will be
tested. You wonít always succeed. But know that you have it within
your power to try. That generations who have come before you faced
these same fears and uncertainties in their own time. And that
through our collective labor, and through Godís providence, and our
willingness to shoulder each otherís burdens, America will continue
on its precious journey towards that distant horizon, and a better
day.

Thank you so much class
of 2005, and congratulations on your graduation. Thank you.